Our readers' choice cruise rankings look at the big things that make or break a trip—dining, service, cabin amenities—but as we were reading the results we found ourselves wondering about the little stuff…like towel animals, those silly terry cloth lobsters, swans, and frogs that end up on your bed after housekeeping tidies up.

Turns out we’re not the only ones thinking about them.

“If we don’t make them, [people will] go straight to guest services and complain that there are no animals,” says Carnival’s senior housekeeping manager Marcin Myszewski, about how popular the critters are onboard.

Carnival Cruises literally wrote the book on these animals (Carnival Towel Creations, which sells about 6,000 copies each month), and it first appeared on the company's cruise ships about 15 years ago. As Myszewski tells the story, a housekeeping member from Thailand started folding his guest’s clothes into the shapes of animals while making the rounds; guests liked it, and other staff members picked up the technique and moved onto towels.

It’s become standard practice, with about 100 animals on the roster and more coming—Myszewski says they’re trying to fashion a koala and kangaroo for the line’s first cruise to Australia this fall.

Even so, he doesn’t teach the skills to housekeeping or provide much guidance at all. New staff members learn the techniques from other staffers and get a fair amount of creative freedom.

“We tell the stewards that it’s important to make different ones every day,” Myszewski says. “They see the guests and understand what they like. If it’s a kid, they’ll make a little monkey or a duck or a chicken. They can make entire humans from the towels, but some guests get scared and complain.”

Carnival isn't the only line that has the animals these days, so we asked our Facebook fans to share their favorite photos from their own cruise experiences. They certainly delievered—swinging monkeys, entire menageries, even life-sized humans all folded from stacks of white terry cloth.